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James Russell Lowell - The Dead House
Work rating: Low

Here once my step was quickened,
  Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome thrilled from the threshold
  To the foot it had known before.

A glow came forth to meet me
  From the flame that laughed in the grate,
And shadows adance on the ceiling,
  Danced blither with mine for a mate.

`I claim you, old friend,` yawned the arm-chair,
  `This corner, you know, is your seat;`
`Best your slippers on me,` beamed the fender,
  `I brighten at touch of your feet.`

`We know the practised finger,`
  Said the books, `that seems like brain;`
And the shy page rustled the secret
  It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, `My down once quivered
  On nightingales` throats that flew
Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz
  To gather quaint dreams for you.`

Ah me, where the Past sowed heart`s-ease.
  The Present plucks rue for us men!
I come back: that scar unhealing
  Was not in the churchyard then.

But, I think, the house is unaltered,
  I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
  To my life as its bed to a brook.

Unaltered! Alas for the sameness
  That makes the change but more!
`Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors,
  `Tis his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson,
  Need I go to Paris and Rome,
That the many make the household,
  But only one the home?

`Twas just a womanly presence,
  An influence unexprest,
But a rose she had worn, on my gravesod
  Were more than long life with the rest!

`Twas a smile, `twas a garment`s rustle,
  `Twas nothing that I can phrase.
But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,
  And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine I would close the shutters,
  Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
  This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
  When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside
  That looks over woodland and corn.
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